The Accidental Manager

I’m an accidental manager. I supervise a children’s department at a public library. You might be one to; most of us in this position are here by…accident.  If you’re like me, your focus in library school was on whether you wanted to be a school, children’s, or teen librarian rather than whether you saw yourself managing a department.

But here we are. The bad news is that we might not have the management training that could be an important resource. The good news is that our librarian skills can help us successfully manage a children’s department.

Listening Well

We can transfer a lot of what we know about the reference interview into the management of staff. A lot of what I do is listen to my staff. My door is open 98% of the time and I encourage them to pop in. And they do–with complaints, ideas, brainstorms and concerns. I try and listen well, which means carefully and thoughtfully, before jumping in and giving them my opinion. And one of my unspoken (and sometimes spoken) rules of the department is “don’t shut it down.” If someone is passionate about something, nobody (including me) gets to shut an idea down without exploring it more fully.

Problem Solving, Decision-Making and Troubleshooting

Once you listen well, you need to bring on your skills to help make decisions and make things happen. Let’s face it; most of the things that come to your door will be the big stuff, the hard stuff, the stuff that needs negotiating and special handling. You need to consider upsides and downsides, how things will affect other staff, departments and the library as a whole. In the same way that you deal with a particularly demanding patron or a group of noisy kids descending on the department, you’ll need calm but assertive leadership, and the ability to sometimes say “no.”

Dealing with Lots of Different Types of People

You don’t deal with a shy 5-year-old the same way you interact with a parent in a hurry. The same goes for management. Of course, you’ll have a style that is your most comfortable way of managing people, but you’ll need to adjust your management for different staff members. And working with other departments can be just as tricky.

Being Willing to Say You Don’t Know

Lots of people feel that it shows weakness to not know things. But I think that saying you don’t know something helps your staff to feel free to say it too.  This can give you insight into what kinds of training, support and resources they need.  Saying you don’t know offers another staff person the opportunity to come forward and be the expert. But of course, you can’t just say “I don’t know” without…

Figuring It Out

Perhaps your skill is not in managing finances or scheduling. Maybe you’re uneasy about running department meetings. You’ll need to bring all your excellent reference skills to bear. The first step  is to determine the things that you’re good at vs. the areas where you need to improve. Then you need to find and utilize an array of resources: other staff members, online training resources, people in similar positions at area libraries, workshops, webinars and of course, books, to help you.

I just finished my first year as an accidental manager. It’s been challenging, but totally worth it!

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Our guest blogger today is Shelley Sutherland, who wrote this piece as a member of the Managing Children’s Services Committee. Shelley is the Youth Services Supervisor at the Niles Public Library in  Branch Library in Niles, Illinois.

If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.